J. N. Darby had a real gift for coining a phrase. One that has been in the back of my mind recently is, "man's pretension not to be entirely lost" ("Letter on Free-will", Collected Writings, Vol. 10, p 185). In context, he was discussing "the doctrine of free-will." I'm going to take his phrase out of context and use it a bit more generally here.
R. A. Huebner used a similar phrase several times in his book The Sovereignty and Glory of God in the Election and Salvation of Lost Men (which is worth a read): "I'm lost, but not that lost!" It's not as clear as Darby's little phrase, but it might be a little easier to throw into conversation.
2 Corinthians 4:6 compares God's work in our hearts to His commanding light to shine out of darkness. I have spent a lot of time contemplating that comparison: it captures so much truth in just a few words. The God who can work in our hearts is the God who calls something from nothing. Any other god isn't enough for lost sinners. A god who needs something to work with isn't going to find the raw materials he needs in lost sinners. But the God who creates something from nothing – that God can do something with us, because what we have to offer (nothing) is exactly the raw materials He needs.
Romans 4:16–17 tells us Abraham believed in the God "who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist" (LSB). That's the God that can save lost sinners: the God who calls into being what doesn't exist. The God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:9) is the only God who can save truly lost sinners.
That's not to say that lost men and women are nothing. But it is to say that there's nothing in us for God to work with (cf Romans 7:18). And we are thankful for a God who doesn't need raw materials! We are thankful to have been captured by the God who can make something from nothing.
An unbeliever might betray himself by pretending that he's not all that bad. An unbeliever might try to assuage her conscience with the observation that there are others who are worse. But God justifies the one who does not work, and instead believes on Him who justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5). It's the one who says, "Praise God! He justifies the ungodly, that means me!" who finds peace with God. The one who refuses to stop working, who refuses to admit his own ungodliness: that one finds there's no God who is able to justify him.
The need for men and women to pretend that we aren't entirely lost runs deep. It's not just something the sinners "out there" do, it's something we do. The sinners out there might find there's no God to justify them unless they admit they are ungodly; but we tend to forget that too, and it's as disastrous to our Christian lives as it is to their justification. We, too, like to pretend we're "not that lost." Sure, we were once unregenerate sinners, but we were saved, right? Now we are able to produce something for God.
A friend asked me a what made me realize the Christian life ("sanctification") was based on grace, not works. I replied, "when I sinned so big I knew there was no going back." There came a point where I realized I had sinned so badly there was nothing I could do to fix it. That is how we learn God's grace.
But it goes deeper even than that: there came a point in my life when I realized the problem wasn't that I was basically a good person who had done some bad things, but that I did those bad things because I am a bad person. We tend to think we are sinners because we sin, but Romans 5:18ff tells us the opposite: we sin because we are sinners. We need to let that sink in: it's not that we are lost because we sin, but that we sin because we are lost.
And this is the problem addressed in Romans 7. It's not the same problem as Romans 6, although there are unifying principles between them. Romans 7:5–6 teaches that the effect of Law on a believer is not to produce righteousness, but to produce passions and lusts. That's an astonishing result, but it follows from what Romans 3:20 teaches us. "[T]hrough the Law comes the knowledge of sin" – not "sins," but "sin." Law teaches us not that this thing or that thing is a sin, but that sin dwells in us (Romans 7:20).
We expect that putting ourselves under Law would push us into righteousness, but we find that Law does exactly what God intended: it reveals to us that we are lost. And it does that by arousing our passions and lusts so that we do "lost" things.
So we might use Darby's little phrase to sum up more than just "the doctrine of free-will," we might use it to sum up all those efforts to use Law to curb our sinfulness: it's just man's pretension not to be entirely lost. If we knew how lost we are – if we believed God when He told us about ourselves – we'd know that applying Law to ourselves must end in condemnation.
If only we weren't lost, then we might be able to do something with Law. If only we weren't lost, we wouldn't need a Savior at all. Think about that.
So what Scripture really teaches is, we need a Savior as much after we believed as we did before. We don't come in to eternal life by God's grace and then walk in it by our efforts. No! We need to be saved just as much as believers as we did when we weren't.
And that's why Darby's little phrase has been in my head so much over the last little while: there are so many things we do that really amount to our pretending not to be entirely lost. And frankly, none of us has time for that kind of pretending. All those things that fail us even though we need so desperately for them to work: all those things are a waste of time to those who really are lost.
The only hope for a man or woman who really is entirely lost is grace. Our hope is that God will act in kindness towards us even though we don't deserve it. And the sooner we learn that applies not only to the sinners "out there," but to ourselves, the sooner we can make progress in our spiritual life.
